Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever the Adante dived,--
So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye, and save the soul besides.


* * * * *

SELF-RELIANCE.


1. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in
your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the
inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered
back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of
the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and
Milton is that they all set at naught books and tradition, and spoke not
what men but what _they_ thought.

2. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament
of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because
it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts;
they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.